The love of family – and pizza – drive Christian and Stefany Patriarca. They uprooted much of their lives (as well as those of their three children) to move to Colorado to find the right treatment for their disabled daughter Sofia. During their journey and quest to provide their daughter a better quality of life, they also found their mission within the ideal of Slice420 in the Colorado Springs community.
Now with construction continuing at a second location that will be special-needs friendly, including a custom-built changing table, the Patriarca clan keeps working to make the world a better place for their children and the community.
Growing up in the Bronx, Christian learned his pizza trade early. Many years later, he moved to Lantana, Florida in the West Palm Beach, area where he operated his own pizzeria. The pizza business was different in Florida, with high-price rental space and air conditioning costs cutting into profits.
Christian put his hard work in, met his now-wife and partner Stefany and had their three children. When their youngest daughter, Sofia, was born with special needs, life became more specific and focused.
The Early Days & Finding the Path
Stefany spent much of Sofia’s early days in the hospital while Christian was working all hours to make ends meet. Sofia was wracked by seizures caused by epilepsy and, as she grew older, the medication and length of seizures severely degraded her quality of life. Sofia couldn’t communicate and the two older children spent much time with their grandparents. Something needed to change.
Stefany learned of a new treatment with cannabis oils that would ease her daughter’s pain but the legality of its use in medicinal cases in Florida was still very gray. While she lobbied for its approval with a law eventually passing for use with seniors, it wasn’t available to help her little girl. After much research, she traveled to Colorado and was able to see the kinds of oil and prescription possibilities, which could help them legally.
After seeing that CBD oils could reduce Sofia’s seizures and dependence on other medications, Stefany told Christian they had to move to Colorado. It was not any easy decision. They sold their Lantana business and moved to Colorado Springs where Slice420 (and a new life) was born.
Doing the Business Right for Slice420
Christian always was a stickler for ingredients for pizza and his encyclopedic knowledge serves him well, but he is also practical and locally focused. “You want to give a nice slice of pizza. People love variety, especially when you’re putting out the quality and the love, and you’re building the pizza right.”
Christian says all the ingredients on the menu are fresh, including hand-rolled Angus beef meatballs that they slice when they’re cooled down for the pizza as well local Polidori Sausage from Denver, “roasted and sliced.” Rounding out the smorgasbord of taste is a plethora caramelized onion, roasted red peppers, pulled, fresh mozzarella, and baby bella mushrooms, sauteed in olive oil, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper. “We do everything, and I’m having fun.”
“We’re pizza. That’s what I love. That’s what I started with.” When they arrived in the Springs, Christian streamlined the business from what he did in Florida … no extraneous menu items. Now he just does pizza, salads, and sandwiches. “I just made it more simple, more refined, took out all the things that were hindering us in Florida … took it all out, and put it in perspective.”
Because of their continuing experiences, the Patriarcas know they wanted their brand to mean something. Christian says, “I wanted people to know our story while we’re here. I wanted to help other people that were going down the same path.”
Their experiences in the special-needs community have changed their lives and is integral to their business, especially at their upcoming second location.
“The new location’s bathroom for the handicapped is built out for them. We want to make it nice for everybody, especially the special-needs community. Because at the end of the day, they’re pushed to the side, they’re looked over, they’re looked down upon. I witness it all the time. I’ve lived the life, right? So I know that it’s uncomfortable to be with handicapped people. It’s completely uncomfortable. And I can say that from experience. But now that I’m actually in the special-needs community, it’s definitely fulfilling and joyful and it’s a blessed experience. It’s exactly where I should be in my life and I’m grateful to be part of it.”
A Special Needs-Friendly Second Location
Stefany also chimes in on the importance of their second location. “This one is very near and dear to my heart because this one’s going to be a nice, big, open concept. It is fully wheelchair accessible, meaning our daughter and the community would be able to gather there.”
With the adult-size changing table, “anybody who comes into our restaurant would be able to use the bathroom with dignity.” She relates from experience that many special-needs kids have to be changed on the floor of bathrooms, in the trunk of an SUV or the backseat of a car. “I mean, we’ve changed Sofia in some crazy places, outside or on the grass of the gas station just because there isn’t anywhere where she can have her diaper changed. When the kids are older, they deserve that privacy, just like anybody.”
Stefany relates that the 420 part of the business is to help bring awareness to the medicinal side of cannabis. “Just like anything else, it can be used and abused. But first and foremost, it does have a medicinal side, and our daughter is living proof.”
Before the oil treatment, Sofia was having more than 1,000 seizures a day. Her longest seizure, according to Stefany, lasted 26 hours.
New Possibilities
“When we moved out here, she was on five anti-epileptics and two muscle relaxers. Now, almost five years later, she is on one anti-epileptic and three cannabis oils. Her average seizures are anywhere between three and five a day [now] lasting under 15 seconds.” Her average seizure length previously was 20 to 45 minutes for each one.
Stefany says it is important that they share their story to give hope to other families, “because that’s how we found out about it.” She discovered there were other families using cannabis oils as treatment with their kids through research.
Stefany had initially met one woman in Colorado whose daughter had the same condition as Sofia and was sleeping almost 23 hours a day. This woman was able to start her own daughter on cannabis oil and, as Stefany recounts, “all of a sudden, she’s opening her eyes…she’s awake, not having seizures and responding to her parents.”
A Better Life for Sofia
Through hearing this story, Stefany realized that this could be Sofia. This was before they were even thinking of moving to Colorado. She thought: “This could possibly be our child. Everything that we thought was underneath there that [possibly] could be.”
Now, Stefany says, it’s all about giving other people hope. “That family gave us the hope that our daughter would be able to overcome this. Our daughter is severely disabled, but she is now living a far better quality of life [here in Colorado Springs] than anyone in Florida ever suspected.”
